History_Of_Wilkes-barre

History Of Wilkes-barre During the early 1700's various Indian tribes, such as the Shawanese, Delaware and Nanticoke, settled in the valley of Wilkes-Barre. In 1768, a group of Yankees, led by Major John Durke, built Fort Durkee near Ross Street. They named the area for John Wilkes and Iasaac Barre. Several battles took place in the following years, but the Yankees were finally recognized as the owners of the land. By the turn of the century, the area had a Newspaper, a post office, and court house. In the late 1800's and early 1900's, hundreds of thousands of immigrants came to the region to work the anthracite coal. This transformed the Wyoming Valley from an isolated farming area to a metropolis. However, the costs of extracting the clean-burning coal from the deep mine shafts were great in human and environmental terms. One out of every four mine workers was a boy. Boys as young as 7 worked the breakers, sorting out rocks from the coal. When mining was at its peak in this area, almost every day the papers carried an account of someone being killed. The most common injury was from fallen rock. The wilkes-barre, area, coal, mine, one, feet, thousand, people, out, hundred, after, years, st, silk, river, railroads, over, opened, now, mining, however, four, city, businesses, built, war, very, valley, two, twenty, through, thousands, thomas, thirty, think